Chapter 201
Before the security officer—clearly startled behind his desk—could utter even a single question or protest about the door nearly torn from its hinges, Ilux had already spoken.
His voice emerged not as a shout, but flat, heavy, and burdened, cutting through the confusion hanging in the air.
That he wished to make a report.
'Something is wrong here, strange enough to be called unsettling.
First, the Security Center should be on full alert, yet the atmosphere here does not seem to reflect a response to an explosion.'
Fhhhh!
'Do they already know? Or are they treating it lightly?'
After his strenuous effort to draw and release breath succeeded in bringing a measure of calm to his wildly pounding heart, Ilux's awareness began to expand beyond the limits of his own body.
For the first time since slamming through the entrance, he truly opened his senses to the room around him.
And that was when the sense of wrongness began to creep in—slowly at first, then seizing him with a cold grip.
The room was crowded.
Far too crowded for a security center during what should have been quiet hours.
Not just one or two guards, but at least six or seven dozen figures in heavy uniforms stood in their respective formations.
More than that, there were also several figures out of uniform—faces bearing solemn expressions usually seen only among senior lecturers or academic administrators.
All of them were focused on screens emitting pale blue light, displaying maps of the academy, flickering diagrams, and rapidly scrolling data.
The sounds he now recognized were the remnants of a serious discussion abruptly cut off by his dramatic arrival.
Firm whispers, interrupted questions, and restrained command tones still lingered in the air like smoke.
An emergency meeting had been underway here long before he—cannon arms and ragged breath included—burst inside.
The strangeness felt real.
This was not routine vigilance or confusion over a single explosion.
This was an activated command space, dense with the intensity of people trying to comprehend or confront something enormous.
The gazes that now shifted toward him carried complex judgments.
There was surprise, there was restrained impatience, but most dominant of all was a deep wariness—as if his dust-covered appearance and unnatural arms were merely visual confirmation of a horrific report they had already received.
"I am submitting an emergency report.
An attack has occurred at the Star Academy Library, accompanied by a large explosion that caused severe structural damage, the collapse of bookshelves, and thick dust that made breathing difficult."
Huuuuuh!
"When I left the site, I did not find other victims, but the area remains dangerous and the source of the threat has not yet been identified.
That is why I am reporting directly."
Although his reason screamed at the many oddities surrounding the room—the sudden stillness, the measuring stares fixed upon him, the emergency-meeting atmosphere heavier than the dust outside—Ilux chose to bury that suspicion deep, for the moment.
There was a more urgent duty to deliver, a grim reality he had carried straight from the front line of disaster.
With sharp discipline, his body—still carrying the aftershock of the blast and residual elemental sting—assumed position.
His feet planted firmly on the cold floor, chest thrust forward, spine straightened like a drawn blade.
Then, with a motion firm and fully aware of academic tradition—however fractured it might now be—his right hand, once again reshaped into a human hand though alien energy still pulsed beneath the skin, rose.
His fingertips touched his right temple, just above the brow, in a formal, rigid salute.
The posture was perfect, a silhouette of discipline amid the chaos he represented.
Within the silence of the room, which felt like the vacuum before a detonation, his voice burst forth.
No longer breathless, it was flat, clear, and charged with forced authority, slicing through the tension like a blade.
The sentence seemed to hang in the air—simple and direct in structure, yet carrying a quiet, lethal impact.
He included no details of the chaos.
No mention of fallen shelves, scattered books, or his frantic flight.
Only the core facts.
An attack.
A bombing.
The location.
"Thank you for the report.
Please rest while the relevant parties handle the matter.
Of course, we will record the information in our logs."
Buuuk – buuuk – buuuk!
'Just thanks and a note taken, as if my report were merely a preface to their real discussion?'
Fuuuuuuh!
Those two seconds of silence stretched unbearably long in Ilux's ears, as if time itself had frozen while the pounding of his heart echoed like war drums inside his skull.
In that silent vacuum, his eyes—honed by vigilance and suffering—caught every micro-movement.
He saw several individuals in the room—men in heavy uniforms, women in laboratory coats—exchange quick glances.
Not casual looks, but a silent transfer of information, a code conveyed through eye flickers and nearly imperceptible nods.
There was an understanding among them, a shared knowledge far beyond the report he had just delivered in strict adherence to protocol.
Then a woman with neatly cut moss-silver hair, her age suspended between youth and old age, stepped forward.
Her expression was professional and cold, devoid of the panic befitting news of a bombing.
'Thank you for the report.
Please rest while the relevant parties handle the matter.'
The sentence was spoken not as genuine gratitude for lifesaving information, but more like a formal acknowledgment that an administrative procedure had been completed.
Even her tone and choice of words felt strange—far too ordinary for an extraordinary situation.
Without giving Ilux any chance to respond or provide further details, the woman had already turned away.
Her steps were quick and certain, heading toward an elderly man seated across the room near the largest bank of monitors.
The man, his face creased like a topographical map of suffering, merely nodded faintly at her, as though their conversation had long been ongoing on a frequency unreadable to others.
And the very moment the woman turned away, as if a switch had been flipped, the atmosphere in the room changed completely.
The tense silence shattered.
The discussions that had previously paused sprang back to life, resuming with the same intensity, as if no interruption had ever occurred.
'Security Center?
More like a Center of Indifference.'
The confusion enveloping Ilux began to transform into something colder and deeper, a cognitive dissonance that pierced straight into the bone.
He stood at the very nerve center of Star Academy's security, the place meant to be the heart of every emergency response, the final bastion that should pound fiercely in answer to wounds inflicted upon the campus body.
Yet what he witnessed was a paradox that nearly choked his thoughts.
Their work—the noble duty emblazoned on every plaque and oath of office—was to protect lives.
To be a shield for every student buried in books, for every teacher imparting knowledge, against whatever dangers might strike the academy's walls.
But the bustle that followed his report, after the official acknowledgment of a bombing, felt more like the noise of a stock exchange than command on a battlefield.
Their discussions sounded abstract and sterile, far removed from the stench of concrete dust, the rustle of torn paper, and the groans of pain still vivid in his memory.
To be continued…